Why City Managers Leave the Profession: A Longitudinal Study in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

A re city managers members of a profession? Perhaps more than with any of their managerial counterparts in government or business, professionalism has been associated with city managers. While it is generally recognized that all managers of complex organizations should possess certain skills in common-skills in the projection of goals, the organization of work, the utilization of personnel, the accountability for resources used, etc.-it is frequently held that the city manager role is different because of the relationships with and responsibilities to a publicly elected city council. The manager was originally brought into city government to centralize responsibility for administration in a single person, a person who would have the managerial skills necessary to marshall the most appropriate use of resources consistent with the political objectives of the council. This required technical skills, but of equal importance the additional knowledge of how to use these skills in terms of the expressed, and frequently unexpressed, needs of the council and the community. More than any other administrator the city manager was thought of as the person who runs the city. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the city manager is expected to be on duty. No other type of managerial position in government or business is quite so totally identified with the constituents being served. There are clear evidences that city managers themselves have accepted these attributes of their work as constituting a claim to professionalism. The International City Management Association is now over 60 years old, and the organization adopted a City Manager Code of Ethics as early as * Very little attention has been given to why individual city managers leave the profession. This article provides some information on this question. In 1966, 92 per cent of all city managers in the Pacific Northwest responded to a questionnaire dealing with job responsibilities, and with career aspirations and satisfactions. A follow-up in 1974 revealed that over one-fourth had left the profession, excluding those who had died or retired. A number of variables were examined, including age, education, city size, job satisfaction, career satisfaction, etc. Most of the leavers sought jobs that offered greater challenges, more opportunities, or better working conditions. We also found that two-thirds of the managers remaining in the profession in 1974 had expressed high satisfaction with their jobs in 1966, compared with only one-third of those who had left the profession by 1974. The principal negative aspects to those who left were salary and council relationships. Nevertheless, most of those who left city manager positions were found in highly related occupations, and about twothirds of them were willing to consider the possibility of returning to a city manager job some time in the future.